And then I'll read one last poem, but before I do,
I want to thank you all again for coming.
I do hope we have a few minutes.
I don't know if that's part of the format usually,
but I'd love to have some discussion with you
and answer any questions might have.
And I also want to thank my many hosts here
in Tucson, the Poetry Center, the Center for Medical
Humanities at the University of Arizona,
and my many new friends here in Tucson.
So this is one last poem, which, again,
is a poem perhaps about empathy, and it's
called "What I Would Give."
"What I would like to give them for a change
is not the usual prescription with its hubris of the power
to restore, to cure.
What I would like to give them, ill
from not enough of lying in the sun, not caring what
the onlookers might think while feeding some banana
to their dogs.
What I would like to offer them is this, not
reassurance that their lungs sound fine
or that the mole they've noticed change is not a melanoma.
But instead of fear transfigured by some doctorly advice,
I'd like to give them my astonishment at sudden rainfall
like the whole world weeping and how ridiculously gently it
slicked down my hair.
I'd like to give them that or the joy
I felt while staring in your eyes
as you learned epidemiology, the science of disease
in populations, the night around our bed like timelessness,
like comfort, like what I would give to them."
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
Thank you again.